1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for returning a robot, to a waiting position thereof, when the robot during operation is stopped by an accidental factor. More specifically, the present invention relates to a programming device for making a program to return the robot to the waiting position.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, the motion of a robot during operation may be stopped by an error or an interference. When stoppage of the robot due to such an accidental factor (hereinafter also called “an emergency stop”) occurs, it is usually necessary for the robot to be returned to a waiting position thereof and the whole operation of a robot system is repeated from the beginning. As a concrete way for returning the robot to the waiting position, a manual operation or a jog-feed operation is generally used for moving the robot.
In other words, in fact, a skilled operator cancels the emergency stop for restarting the robot system and moves the robot to the waiting position by a jog-feed. Therefore, it takes a lot of time to restart the system and carry out the operation again. In particular, when a plurality of robots is arranged in a work cell, all of the robots are stopped if the system has a trouble. In this case, the workload of the operator is very large as each of the robots must be sequentially moved by the jog-feed. In spite of such a situation, a concrete proposal of a technique for solving the problem is not found in published documents.